What I am now
by lieutenant Alia
Summary: Beneath the surface of Imardin the shadows of the past are beginning to stir. Survival and desperation are pushed to the fro as Laurena and Mikken learn that nothing is what it seemed,that history may not be finished with their families just yet.
1. It has come to the End

The beginning of the end

"Promise me something."

"Anything."

"Protect them as best as you can."

"You know I will do that."

"No black magic, no Ichani, no Sachaka, promise?"

"I promise."

"Do you remember...by the waterfall?"

"I do."

"So peaceful, so beautiful. A few snatched hours where we didn't have a care."

"I will never forget."

"I felt so happy."

"As did I."

"But this is also a day of joy."

"But..."

"No! Do not take away from this day, the day we have waited for so long."

"I am sorry..."

"Don't be. You have brought me the greatest joy I have ever felt."

"No don't go...not yet."

"I must. It is time."

"I...I love you."

"My love for you will never change, even now. Be happy. Let...my gift to you be your anchor...in the days to come...remember...your promise."


	2. Becoming One of Us

A landscape so desolate spread from his beneath his feet, like a motionless ocean. It was vast and empty. Lifeless. A warm wind buffeted his body. The robes he wore blew in billows behind him, outlining a figure that was both thin and strong. His paradoxical form was at odds with the uniform land. He was at odds with this place. A figure among none. A sole dot in emptiness.

It was difficult to describe the feeling that arose in him, for his throat seemed to tighten and his eyes smart a little when he saw that there was no end and no beginning to this place. No mountains cut the grey sky before him to give character to the scene, to give it form and shape. No rivers ran and sliced the dry cracked earth. No homes or cities gave the place splendour. It was a dead land.

Suddenly, far before him he saw an indistinct figure. Instinctively he moved towards them, his booted feet bringing up clouds of dust. The feeling of loneliness overwhelmed him and he wanted nothing but to be in someone's company, anybody's company so that he could talk, maybe even laugh. Maybe be comforted.

However as he ran the figure got no closer, in fact the distance between them seemed to be unchanged. He ran faster. Like a beast on the hunt he clawed at the wind and forced himself to carry on, even when his lungs burned, even when his legs began to scream in protest. He ran on.

"You will not find me here."

The man stalled at the voice. His heart immediately constricted as he recognised those high tones, the matter of fact speech.

"You will never find me here.'

"Sonea?" he whispered.

"I know, it has been a while."

He laughed despairingly, amused by her typical humour yet unbelievably tortured by the emotions brought by a voice he missed every single day.

"How can this be?"

"It can't. I told you I am not here. This is not the place where you will find me at your life's end."

"No!" he shouted, "I can't wait that long. Where are you?"

"Your journey in life has not ended. You have much to live for, many debts that you need to repay. Once you have done what you were born to do in life, you will then find me in death.'

The man grimaced, sadness saturating his chest like blood, pooling and cloying; a mark he could never remove.

"I can't wait that long." He muttered once more.

A soft gust of cool air caressed his face, "You will. You definitely will."

"Father!"

Akkarin woke with a start. He glanced, panicked, around his room. In the silence of the early morning gloom he could hear his breath punctuating the silence and with it came his usual shame. A nightmare. It seemed that he had spent most of his nights tossing and turning in the turmoil of his own mind. It had been particularly bad last night, he recalled. He could still feel the emptiness in his chest, where his heart had been ripped out and buried six feet underground.

"FATHER!"

Akkarin jumped as the shout sounded from outside his bedroom door. With an almighty crash his door flew open and he was confronted by a tiny bristling form.

"Oh you're awake. Why didn't you answer?" a childish voice demanded.

Involuntarily Akkarin smiled, much to his future chagrin.

'Oh, and you're smiling now are you? What is so funny? We are going to be late and you are not even out of bed yet!"

The smile slowly slid from Akkarin's face, "What are we late for?"

"The Acceptance Ceremony!"

Akkarin glanced at the window. He had been mistaken, it wasn't morning at all. It was winter; a dark cold winter's day...Takan hadn't woken him once again.

He turned back to the girl waiting so impatiently at his bedroom door.

"I won't be long."

With a disgusted snort she left and Akkarin quickly jumped out of bed and moved to the washing stand by the window. Staring into the water he vaguely saw the lines that bordered his mouth, branched out from the corners of his eyes. The image quickly disappeared in a shower of ripples and he dipped his hands into the icy cold water and ran them over a face that felt too narrow and dry to be his. Even as he hurriedly dressed into his Black robes he noticed that his body had become sinewy with age. It was still slim, still muscled and...functional, however it had lost a fullness and healthiness that had been there ten years ago,...fifteen...

"Father!"

"I'm coming." He shouted.

Tugging one last time at his robes, Akkarin took a deep breath and strode from his room.

The Great Hall echoed with the sound of voices, rising in argument and murmuring in secret conversation. It was a miasma of noise, essence and colour. Everywhere Laurena looked she saw women dressed in sober yet extravagant gowns of silk and velvet. They wore flowing coats lined with fur, a meagre guard against the winter chill. Laurena guessed that beneath the russet tones of the animal one woman wore around her neck there was a mountain of jewels, just waiting to sparkle in a lighted room-far away from the drafty Great Hall.

The men were dressed similarly to their wives. Outfitted with the best material money could buy they mingled among each other, laughing here, clapping each other on the back there. To Laurena's dark eyes it was a scene of falsities and boring political intrigue. She knew that Jeben of House Saril loathed the very sight of Loren of House Terril yet there he stood, grinning with his political foe. Laurena shook her head, disgusted. Life in the Guild, though still packed with its politics and scandal was much simpler to understand. IN the Guild the people of importance were noted, the popular magicians and not so very popular magicians were noted yet everyone seemed to be connected by a bond that seemed to disregard everything, including social status and power- a bond called magic. The Guild, in a way, seemed to run like a dysfunctional family.

She had always been proud to be able to place herself akin to this family, this clutter of chaos and intrigue yet now she was becoming a part of the madness. That very day she was going to take her place among all the great magicians, along with her father and mother. She was going to learn magic and enter a world she had only been able to view for the last fifteen years.

As she entered the Great Hall all eyes turned as usual to briefly glance at her and quickly look away. However, as the assembled crowd took note of the untraditional trousers she wore, topped with a simple white shirt she heard tuts of disapproval and angry mutterings, all of which ceased once a black robed figure drew to a smooth stop by her side.

"You could have worn a dress Laurena." Her father muttered.

She glanced slyly at him and saw the amusement, so cleverly concealed from everyone else, in his eyes.

"Now where would be the fun in that? They expect a doll from the houses, why would I give them what they want?"

Akkarin chuckled and began to make his way to the open side doors of the Guildhall, "Have I ever told you how much you remind me of your mother?"

Laurena grinned, "Everyday."

They separated at the side doors, she moving off to join the crowd while her father moved to take his place with the other higher magicians.

As she made her way into the crowd of fashionable and gossiping people she noted here and there children of her own age, dressed in clothes more suited for the streets than the dignified surrounds of the Great Hall.

_They must be from the slums, _she thought.

Something inside of her clenched as she saw how the more wealthier patrons shunned these outsiders, people they believed to be nothing but thieves and murderers. The scum of society. Yet Laurena couldn't look at them without feeling an old familiar sympathy-and pain. Her mother had been one of them once. Someone she had never gotten to know. Someone she still missed none the less.

Sonea. It was a name that was in everybody's minds as they viewed her now. That and the fact that her father, as of twenty years ago, was the most feared man in all of the Allied lands. After the Ichani invasion, in which Sonea and Akkarin had killed the bandits who had so easily attempted to invade Kyralia, a scandal arose when Sonea, Akkarin's Slum born novice, was discovered to be pregnant. Outrage in the Guild had escalated to the point where Sonea had even considered leaving the Guild however one thing tied her to the place she so loved-Akkarin. During that final and panoramic battle between her, Akkarin and the Ichani, Akkarin had been mortally wounded by Kariko's Sachakan blade. Barely healed Akkarin had remained in a feverish sleep as sickness after sickness tore through his body as a result of the wound. When he had finally woken up he had, in his own way, straightened the guild out. Disapproval that a guardian should impregnate his novice quickly died down and instead the Guild had focussed on the task of recuperating, increasing its numbers by reluctantly taking potential magicians from the slums and grieving for the dead that had been so tragically lose.

And while the Guild had been organising itself talk were being held whether to reinstate Akkarin, talk that had been meaningless to her father for he had something more important to focus on-Sonea, and the fact that their love child was growing day by day in her womb.

Laurena had heard that her Father, in those days had not been happier. She had heard that he had loved her mother with a passion no one knew he had, that he had watched over her like a secret guardian. Protecting her from the vicious tongues of the houses. However the time came when nothing Akkarin could do would save Sonea. She died giving birth to their first child-their only child-their daughter Laurena.

And now Laurena walked through the Great Hall on her way to becoming the magician she had always dreamed about. She sympathised for the dwells who she felt akin to by blood, she nodded respectfully at the nobles who were there and a part of her father's life. Yet she also walked in the Great Hall with her own story to make. She had her mother's astonishing past to define her, and she also had her father's status and black magician and high lord, as the hero of Kyralia to also further the powerful aura that surrounded her. Yet the people assembled knew that in those quick steps of her, in those dark inquisitive eyes of hers and in that tiny body of hers there was a potential that would outlast lifetimes. This was Laurena of family Delvon House Velan, daughter of the High Lord Akkarin and Slum Girl Sonea. This was the girl who would make sure that the generations would not forget her.

That was in the future, however. In that moment she was making her way towards the slowly opening doors of the Guildhall, where Osen the greying Administrators assistant was standing and calling all future novices to attention.

Laurena could feel the excitement of the young people around her. They were from all backgrounds and cultures, the Vindo and the Lonmar, Elyne and Kyralian. It was amazing that such a force as magic could combine them all so spectacularly under the Guildhall roof that day. But then magic was a powerful thing that worked in mysterious ways.

Laurena found herself behind a tall Kyralian boy; he excused himself and allowed her to move in front of him. She smiled politely but declined.

And then they were moving. Laurena tried to contain the flutter of excitement in her stomach yet it moved up to become a full fledged grin on her face. She did notice all the magicians staring, like a gaggling bunch of stunned children, but she took no notice. Why should she? She belonged in the Guild as much as they did.

Whispers of awe emanated from the dwells as they encountered, for the first time, the full power of the Guild. Row upon row of magicians rose in tired seat to the side walls of the Guildhall. Laurena could only imagine what it was like for them, coming from the dirt and grit of life in the slums to mix with this motley bunch of people. The extravagance in addition to the unusual behaviour of the magicians must have been quite a sight to see with new eyes. Even some of the families from the houses were gasping at the pure splendour of the place. It was only the boy in front who seemed oblivious to the grandeur of the Guildhall and was instead ignoring the others and stoically looking before him. For a moment Laurena wanted to reassure him but felt that he might be embarrassed by the gesture, so she left him alone.

As Osen reached the front of the Guildhall he directed the future novices into a straight line, facing the Higher Magicians. Laurena took the opportunity to glance up at her father. Her heart squeezed with pride as she saw him sitting up there, below the King's seat. His power was clearly without doubt, he was the master of this domain. His pale skin and angular face were like marble. Emotionless in these formal surrounds yet she knew that her father could laugh like any other man, he could grieve and he could mourn. Yet it was this power over him emotions that impressed Laurena most, that and the fact that he had a presence that over ruled others, made them respect him, She hoped that she could be like him someday. It could have been said that Laurena respected her father, admired his strength and dignity yet, in truth, that would have been insufficient to describe how Laurena really felt towards the man that she had lived with, a man that had cared for her from the moment she was born and a man that had been there for every nightmare, for every scraped knee and hurt feeling. Laurena loved her father. Despite the fact that he was distant at times, that his grief over her mother had never faded and that made him remote, she still loved him.

And now he stared down at her and she could see a glimmer of the man beneath, He would not look at her if he was not proud.

Lord Osen's voice suddenly drew her attention away from her father. He smiled as he intoned the traditional words that had introduced every single magician in that hall into the Guild, "I present to you the Winter intake of novices."

"And so we begin," a quiet voice muttered beside her. Laurena turned to see who it was but was distracted as Lord Osen began introducing each of the novices in turn to the assembled magicians in the Guildhall. Lord Osen made his way slowly down the line, pausing at each individual for a respectful time before moving on. Laurena waited impatiently. She wanted to find out who the boy beside her was, to maybe understand why his voice had sounded soo hopeless as he had uttered those fateful words. Why had he been so bleak? Was the Guild not an opportunity of a life time? Maybe he was just nervous?

Whatever the case, Laurena sighed as Osen stopped at her and waited for the sudden murmuring that had built up behind her to die down. Eventually the moment came. Osen took that final step-and the boy collapsed into a heap on the ground.

A gasp echoed around the small confines of the Guildhall and a woman cried out from the seats reserved for visitors to the Guild. Osen immediately dropped to his knees and placed a gentle hand on the boy's forehead where sweat beaded like raindrops on a slab of marble. The boy looked so pale and fragile, lying there prone on the wooden floor. Laurena couldn't help but feel a well of sympathy rise in her chest and she quickly knelt by him. Carefully opening the top button of his shirt she tried to give him some room to breathe. Yet his face remained motionless. He was deep in the realm of unconsciousness.

"What do you think is wrong with him?" Laurena murmured, trying to ignore the wails the rang behind her. It was odd but it was as if there was a bubble of calm around d her and Osen. While everybody else panicked and gossiped in equal noisy measures she and Osen were trapped inside this oasis of silence, with the boy lying before them.

"I honestly don't know Laurena. His body is healthy, his mind was sound when we tested him. Even now I cannot sense anything."

"Did Lorlen mention anything of this to you?" a deep voice asked behind them.

Laurena turned with a sigh of relief to see her father kneeling behind them.

"No, High Lord. He never said." Osen frowned, "Is there something that Lorlen did not tell me?"

At the mention of the Administrator's name once more Laurena glanced warily at her father.

"What has Lorlen got to do with this boy?" she asked.

It was a tense moment before her father answered, one in which she thought she would have to begin to worm the answer from him. He, however, raised his dark eyes to meet hers. They were a mirror image of each other, dark eyes and endless eyes yet, for the first time in a long time, Lorena saw in her father's eyes sympathy. The one emotion he would not let himself succumb to was written in those black pits as obvious as white sand on black rocks.

"Laurena, this is Lorlen's son."

Laurena gasped as Osen shook his head sadly. Now she finally understood the boy's despairing words. Now she realised that life at the Guild was not going to be the same again.


	3. A History Shared

A history shared

He dreamed that he was in a cage. The bars were all around him, endless rows of black sentries-watching his every movement. These silent guardians, they crowded him, and in their own menacing way they stole his breath. Never before had this young man been more frightened.

He knew that he had entered the realm of unconsciousness, just as he did every night. Yet, contrary to the many books he had read in forced solitude, his sleep had never been bliss. The darkness had never come to wrap him in a warm blanket of security and comfort. Every night he had been subjected to a queer sort of torture. His freedom had always been taken. This time, even before he had fully comprehended those immovable bars he had, without thought, subjected himself to imprisonment. Such was the nature of routine; a weakness that people strode and killed for. Routine made a person feel safe, feel-strong in a way that only made them weak and simple. For the young man, his nightly imprisonment, whether it be behind bars, or in an endless cave or even in the muffles depths of a river-drowning, was something that proved to him nothing had changed. For if it changed it could only change for the worse, this horrific life he had to lead. It could only ever change for the worse.

He knew that some would ask why he did not fight for the better, why he didn't strive to improve his situation. Typical, foolish Kyralians. A proud race...too proud. They were cold to the point of aloofness, conservative to the point of insanity. They believed in honour and decency yet refused to show their fellow man the common courtesy of minding their own business. They would look on his imprisonment as a kind of test, a kind of challenge that would prove his worth as a man but...what would they do if they had no choice? What would they do when they would hurt someone they loved if they escaped?

Typical Kyralians, they would never understand.

They young man moved forward slightly and rested his hands on the emotionless bits of metal. They were cold, almost icy, to the touch. Running his pale fingers over them he felt his skin snag on the uneven texture, as if the metal wanted to bite the soft flesh. His ran his hands over the metal again. This time he heard a soft rasping sound. He did it again, and again, and again.

Without warning a whimpering sound escaped his throat and he was pummelling at the bars. It wasn't an act to escape: he knew that his destiny was to remain inside the confines of that insidious cage for the rest of his guilt free life. It was more so passion that drove him to hammer his fists futilely against those strong bars, for in the undecorated structure he saw his past, his present and his future all rolled and compacted into one bar, one cage. He knew that he could have done anything with his life yet he was still imprisoned. He knew that up to that moment, he could have been like any other Kyralian boy, free to manoeuvre and love the life around him. He knew that all opportunities in life had passed him and would always pass him by. That was what made him so angry. The loss. It was like looking beyond the bars of this metaphorical cage to see the landscape beyond. Everything out there was free-yet he couldn't have it. His soul, his innate compassion would not allow it. And so here he was, again. Back to the point he had always started with in this monologue of doubt, fear and anger. He was a prisoner for life.

The pain was too much. He was strong but he wasn't that strong. He closed his eyes and rested his sweating forehead against the bars of his cage. He called for a calm to descend, one which he called on too often from too young an age. Without warning the metal beneath his fingertips began to slip away. He began falling into oblivion, non-existent air whooshing past him as he made his way ever downward. He could imagine all the terrible things that he passed as he fell. He could also imagine what was waiting for him at the bottom. Yet when he did eventually his something substantial and solid it was...soft? Cushioning?

The young man opened his eyes and saw, for once, something beautiful.

Laurena forced a smile on her face as the boy opened impeccably blue eyes. Unnatural for a Kyralian, she thought, but he was undoubtedly his father's son. She could see it, now that she knew who his father was. The thin face, the pale skin, the dark hair. That _was_ typical of Kyralians, yes, but it was the shape of his face and faint lines around his youthful mouth that reminded her of another man, a happier man. A man that had changed so much in so little time.

Laurena quickly dispelled those thoughts from her mind, sure that they would only lead down dark reminiscent alleys, places that she had learnt to avoid without a moment's hesitation. She knew that in the shadows there would only be pain, pain that was so unbearable it could drive a person mad. Sad, to think that remembering hurt so much yet was it not in remembrance that a person realised how much they had lost? Laurena felt that, for her, the easiest option was not to remember. She had lost her mother, she had lost her birth family and she had seen her father loose his closest friend-why would she want to remember anything in her past when it was, in itself, so filled with the ugliness that fate had dealt her. It was always better to live in the present.

However, as she stared into the boy's enquiring eyes she saw a darkness there that was at odds with his youth. It coalesced just below the surface. Laurena wondered at it, but only for a moment. It shouldn't have been surprising considering who he was.

"I guess you know who I am."

Laurena started. Realising that the boy was smiling at her in a way that showed he had caught her staring, she looked away, hoping that the blush she felt rising on her cheeks didn't burn too brightly.

"I'm afraid I do." she said, trying to infuse her typical confidence into a voice that was growing quiet with embarrassment.

At once the blue eyes clouded over. He turned away and moved to get up.

"What...what are you doing?" she stuttered.

"I'm going." He snapped.

"What do you mean you're going? You need to rest. Lady Vinara will be here soon, she said so herself."

The boy shrugged into his jacket which had been lying on the chair beside the bed he rested in. He didn't reply to her outburst but continued instead to ready himself to leave. Laurena was shocked at his sudden anger. What had she done wrong? If anything she had been more than courteous to the boy who, for one, was the son of a mad man, and two had ruined what was to be the best day of her life. What more did he want? A meal? Gifts for making himself the centre of attention on such an important day?

When he continued ignore her Laurena stood and scowled at him.

"Fine," she said coolly, "if you are going to act in this ridiculous fashion without even an explanation then I will personally escort you the door."

The boy turned icy eyes on her. For a moment Laurena felt as if he had somehow reached into her body and froze her heart, so strange was the chilling dread she felt suddenly course through her body.

"You're eyes..." she stuttered.

He frowned and turned to face away from her again. She shivered, slightly relieved that he had turned those accusing eyes away from her.

_They were black, _she thought. _His eyes _changed _colour. _

It was true. As he had turned his eyes, which had once been blue, as bright as the sky had been that morning, had turned an ominous black. As dark as pits and as deep as the emotion she had seen beneath their frozen surfaces. She looked up in shock at his hunched form. He was pulling at his shirt in irritation, no doubt trying in a vain attempt to pull out the creases that had formed from his fall onto the floor of the Guild Hall that morning.

For the first time, even though she was still angry at this changeable fool of a boy, she began to wonder. The notion was ill afforded for at that moment he faced her once more and saw the curious expression on her face.

"Well, am I going to have to show myself out?"

His words reached her in a series of hammer blows and she immediately called up her favourite, and most daunting social mask. Mirroring his bland, aloof expression, she straightened herself up and looked the boy straight into his, now blue, eyes.

"Follow me if you will."

Thus Laurena of family Delvon, House Velan, led the poor embarrassed and upset son of the Administrator Lorlen, from her room to the guest room of the High Lord's residence. With a quick turn of her wrist she snapped open the door and smiled as the crisp wintery air caused the boy to shiver in his thin clothes.

"As you requested, the door, my dear sir."

He sneered and pushed himself past her into the quickly diminishing sunlight outside. However, before she could close the door she heard his voice, quiet and emotionless, whisper out of the growing gloom.

"It seems you really are all the same."

Not understanding what he meant, but knowing she had to come up with some witty reply to save her reputation, which had already been tarnished from her shock at the boy's sudden anger, Laurena smiled her typical, quaint, political and public smile and said, "We are what you allow yourself to think we are, Mikken."

And then, with all the decorum her partially noble blood allowed her, she closed the door with a snap on the face of the poor, upset Administrator's son. Not understanding that before her had stood a boy who was as much a prisoner of his past as she was of her future.


End file.
